The Train Wreck Presidency

You’ll read this story and digest the intellectual content as food for thought. He’ll just read the headline and lede, while searching for his own name.

Despite the considerable advantages money and social standing provide in the American caste system this train wreck of a president is neither intelligent nor well read. Trump remains deeply and profoundly ignorant, even at the center of the greatest intelligence and data gathering machine in the history of the human race.

(Congratulations, you now have a longer attention span than the President of the United States)

Ignorance and narcissism are the real Trump brand and the poisoned fruit of the grotesque caste system now taking shape in America.

This caste system has given us a president who is focused on his own intellectual comfort and incapable of expanding himself via the acquisition of painful truths which challenge his assumptions. A man who is a worthy poster child for the millions of know-nothing blockheads who get their “news” from the comforting lies of the Right Wing Noise Machine.

In sum, this president’s brains are all in his wallet. Where they compete for space with his huge ego, insatiable appetite for empty flattery and self aggrandizement, and the inherited wealth which has made him so overconfident in his own – very limited – abilities.
The Brits referred to talented men from upper crust families as “men of parts” during the Victorian Era to distinguish them from the stunted fools who sprouted like weeds from their hereditary caste system. Donnie Trump would not have made the cut.

As he has repeatedly demonstrated, he is a not a man of parts.

Rather, he is a train wreck of a president. A deeply flawed and deeply bigoted individual who is unfit for leadership, unworthy of the high office he now pollutes, and incapable of exercising any control over his own boorish impulses.

Much like the stunted rich fools he’s named to his cabinet. A group of wealthy men and women whose suitability for public service seems to have been divined solely from the size of their bank accounts.
One of the vestiges of America’s new caste system is that the ultra wealthy have almost no personal familiarity with the burdens they’ve cheerfully piled upon the poor and faltering middle class since the end of The Cold War in 1991.

These fortunate sons and daughters believe they’re meant to rule the rest of us like the hereditary royals of old. Even though their own formative experiences have been amassed largely behind the gates, doors and walls of America’s elite country clubs, exclusive prep schools, and rich enclaves. Places like The Hamptons, Palm Beach and Greenwich, Conn.

They are beneficiaries of a very American form of economic apartheid rooted in the comforting fiction that money is the sole measure of a man.

These social blinders allow Trump and the rich fools around him to view themselves as men and women of parts. A flawed view which is akin to staring into a funhouse mirror with no awareness of the built-in distortion.

The result is the “happy few” that Occupy Wall Street refers to as “The Predatory 1 Percent.” This blissfully ignorant “band of brothers” is united not by shared suffering, service and sacrifice. Instead, they are united by the additional privileges and riches which have accrued to the ultra wealthy from our country’s ill advised turn toward savage capitalism.

These toxic elites share a common affliction called “affluenza.” One of the most debilitating symptoms of this pox is the ridiculous idea that knowledge is communicated via osmosis and can be purchased. With no further effort by them.

For example, the ultra rich equate the act of buying a book or a college education with the more laborious process of reading the book or being an active participant in a challenging class. As if the opportunity to acquire knowledge is the same as knowledge itself.

They possess a shared delusion that because their daddy is a professional real estate developer, politician or investor they are somehow a professional real estate developer, politician or investor too. This inflated sense of self extends to the belief that owning a Montana cattle operation from afar makes them a “rancher,” with all the accrued knowledge the title implies.

This poser mindset encouraged Trump to see himself as the author of the book “The Art of the Deal,” even though it was ghostwritten for him by Tony Schwartz. The latter got to know the silver spoon during the interviews they conducted for the book, which was published in 1991.

Trump has a very short attention span, grows frustrated quickly, and tends to quit when he’s losing, according to Schwartz. He predicted the boy president will eventually resign and declare victory, but not before doubling down again and again on his most outrageous lies.

It was that capacity for delusion which convinced Trump to put himself forward as a moderator for a presidential debate in 2011, even though he had no journalism experience. The same mindset eventually convinced him he was “a man of parts” and a natural leader of men who should seek the presidency.

Similar delusions spurred the Bush family to push young Geedub toward a political career. And have imbued the Clinton family with the outrageous notion their pampered and privileged Chelsea is somehow a worthy representative for America’s poor and faltering middle class.

As if ruining the lives of the poor and middle class by offshoring our jobs, stealing our savings, and transforming us from homeowners into renters are now birthrights of the country club set.

David Brooks, The New York Times’ conservative columnist, memorably and accurately described Donnie Trump as a “childish man.” He might also have been speaking of those around this president and the toxic generation of worthless elites from whence they were drawn.

The manchild that is Little Donnie Trump at 71 sees himself as a heroic figure, fighting the good fight for the country club crowd. Rather than the adolescent con man he really is.

Dan Rather bristles at the description of Trump as a “con man,” on the basis that his incompetence is an insult to grifters everywhere.

“To call Trump a conman, as many have, is a disservice to the art of the con,” the dean of American broadcast journalists said.

For one thing, real con artists tend to know exactly who they are and what they do for a living. Whereas unwitting posers do not.

Sadly, the truth for The Donald is whatever lie, exaggeration, half truth or sin of omission he can bully or pay others into believing. This shortcoming has led him to surround himself with liked-minded fools and opportunistic flunkies, such as the reptilian Anthony Scarmucci, Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon, KellyAnne Conway and Boris Epshteyn. It also nourishea the myth of his loyalty to subordinates even as he jettisons them one by one.

For someone who talks so often about the need to “Make America Great Again,” Trump is doing more to undermine American global leadership than any president in modern history.

He is a laughingstock among other world leaders. A man whose closest parallel is the hereditary leader of The Hermit Kingdom – North Korea’s plump, pampered and delusional Kim Jong-un.

Like Trump, who received five draft deferments during the Vietnam War, Kim Jong-un is a great warrior. Albeit in the abstract.

Trump told his biographer that his time at the New York Military Institute for wayward rich kids gave him more military training than most veterans of our armed services receive. He drew criticism from veterans groups for appearing in a military style outfit earlier this year (above left) during an aircraft carrier photo op. The incident drew comparisons to the stolen valor scandals in which lifelong civilians claim military service they have not performed and wear medals they have not earned.

In short, both Trump and Kim appear slightly detached from reality.

Little Donnie Trump openly longs for the mythical halcyon days of group bias. The “good old days” when black Americans were slaves, Irish Americans were indentured servants, Italian and Jewish Americans were confined to urban ghettos by exclusionary housing covenants, American women were sexual slaves to their husbands, and the British Empire used gunboat diplomacy to force China to allow opium sales to its citizens.

Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un longs for a victorious and glorious nuclear exchange with the world’s foremost military power. He’s the best at whatever he does – just like Little Donnie Trump. Or so their highly paid lackeys tell them.

The Donald could not manage to erode America’s standing in the world to the degree he has without the mindless support of millions of reflexive rule followers attached to the Faux News propaganda drip. Comatose Americans who are as suspicious of any criticism directed at them as the golden calf which has become their graven POTUS.

Introspection and compassion are not part of their mental toolkit. They are the modern embodiment of the ancient mammon worshiper of the Bible, who Moses put to the sword for worshiping a statue of a golden calf in his absence.

The painful truth is that Trump and his followers remain deeply and willfully ignorant on a level that threatens not only themselves, but the world. One not seen since the anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant Know Nothing Party of the mid-1800s.

Much like the nativist Know Nothings of old, these modern Know Nothings are deeply suspicious of whatever they do not understand and incapable of figuring out what’s actually going on in the world through the distorted lens of their own mythical supremacy. They see liberal conspiracies in the competition between dueling journalists and dated group stereotypes in an increasingly diverse nation which has evolved to judge people on the basis of their individual characters.

Our modern Know Nothings think they’ve peeped something the rest of us have not. Something that makes them patriotic and insightful, rather than credulous and ignorant. It’s just not true, and there are no comforting lies or sins of omission which can soften that inconvenient truth for those who have gleefully removed themselves from the so-called “reality-based community.”

The term was coined by the Predatory 1 Percent to obscure the unremitting class warfare they’ve waged against their fellow Americans – that’s you and me – for the past 40 years.

They have marginalized us in our own land. Transforming us into second-class citizens from proud members of the world’s foremost democracy.

Poor and middle class Americans are visible only when they choose to acknowledge us. Like when they acknowledge our active duty military for their service while ignoring the homeless veterans who live in our forests and under our bridges.

They’ve destroyed our unions, pensions and job security; replaced us in the media and elected office; off-shored our jobs to China, India and Mexico; transformed our nonprofit healthcare system into a blood money profit machine which is the leading cause of U.S. personal bankruptcy; and locked our children into a form of debt slavery that begins in college.

All with the enthusiastic support of the modern Know Nothings on the far right.

Today, these useful idiots are gazing lovingly at their own chauvinism as it’s being reflected back at them by the golden calf that is Donnie Trump.

In that respect alone they are worthy followers for this train wreck of a president.

He is a profoundly narcissistic man who could never have achieved high office if the Democratic and Republican political machines had not sold out their constituents – that’s you and me – to Wall Street. This painful truth is the real shame of the excessive speaking fees, bogus charitable donations, and insider trading tips our political insiders now habitually use to wash clean their pay-to-play bribes.

Their lies paved the way for Trump’s lies. By creating a situation in which our new political aristocracy can only survive by misleading the electorate – that’s also you and me.

First, by encasing themselves in homogeneous congressional districts via gerrymandering; second, by exempting themselves from term limits; third by exempting themselves from our laws against insider trading; and fourth, by making it illegal to protest against them.

In sum, without their rampant political corruption the presidential train wreck that is Donnie Trump would never have become “the little engine that could” undermine the most powerful nation in the world.

So forget the so-called War on Drugs, flesh-eating bacteria, North Korea and all the other false crises being rolled at us daily by a news media which now belongs to predatory hedge funds and private equity funds. Our own toxic elites are now the foremost danger to American democracy.

The delusional train wreck of a man named Donnie Trump is merely a poster child for this cloud of human locusts, whose greed and ambition threatens to consume us all.

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The Cynical Times is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news and satire organization devoted to the faltering middle class, which specializes in painful truths. It was founded in 2011 to expose the knowing lies and sins of omission of the Predatory 1 Percent, their political hookers in Washington, D.C., and the paid propagandists of the mainstream news media.